"Countdown the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the National Nightmare of George W. Bush's reign is over. As bad as it gets with war, deficits, injustice and just downright international embarrassment, at least the end is in sight."(National Nightmare Website)

What she really wants is that electrician from Rhode Island. The one her father-in-law taught everything he knew. Call it a debt of gratitude. It's not love, but call it admiration. She's already booked a suite at the Oriental, down the hall from where Bush stays. She wants to be lying naked on top of the covers. She wants him to rush in and rape her. She wants to feel every wire he’s got piercing her. She wants to be scarred. It doesn’t make any difference how old or clean he is. Just so he’s from Rhode Island. And then she wants him to brag to everyone.

A few years ago, driving to Queens to teach, she got trapped behind a Good Friday parade on Third Ave. All the side streets were closed off. This was before she had a cell phone, so she pulled over at two pay phones and called the senior center, asking them to tell people she was on her way, caught behind some stupid parade, to please wait.

Her husband says it wasn’t a parade, it was the Stations of the Cross.

The march to war hurt the economy. Laura reminded me of that a while ago, that remember what was on the TV sceens – she calls me, ‘George W.– ‘George W.’ I call her, ‘First Lady,’ No.anyway – she said, we said, march to war on our TV screen.

They didn’t think we were a nation that could conceivably sacrifice for something greater than our self; that we were soft, that were so self-absorbed and so materialistic that we wouldn’t defend anything we believed in. My, were they wrong. They just were reading the wrong magazine or watching the wrong Jerry Springer show.

Citing “insufficient evidence,” top EPA officials in the Bush administration refused to raise the annual standard for fine particles of soot, which penetrate deep into the lungs and are believed to contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year.

To miss a day is one thing. To miss a leap, a chance to get over the hurdle, is something else. And there were frogs in her pond playing leap frog, eating the small fish, stirring up the sand along the bottom, dying the water deep beige. Then there were ducks who ate the frogs and fox who ate everything except the duck heads. She was left with brown water.

More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than – I say more Muslims – a lot of Muslims have died – I don’t know the exact count – at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there’s been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill.

We know there are known knowns: that is to say we know there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

For several years, Google users could type “miserable failure” into the search engine and be directly taken to the official White House biography of George W. Bush. However, on January 31, 2007, Yahoo News announced that Google had fixed this “link bomb” glitch.

We’re concerned about AIDS inside our White House – make no mistake about it.

WWW.awfulplasticsurgery.com adds Bush to its roster of bad rhinoplasties.

Laura is out campaigning along with our girls. And she speaks English a lot better than I do. I think people understand what she’s saying.

See, one of the interesting things in the Oval Office – I love to bring people into the Oval Office – right around the corner from here – and say, this is where I office, but I want you to know the office is always bigger yhan the person.

I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them when I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during president, and I like them after president.

You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been dethroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. – Abraham Lincoln 1864. Quoted on Lincoln’s birthday.

The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.

President Bush met with the president of China at the White House. The arrival ceremony was interrupted by a protester who started yelling, “Stop the persecution, stop the torture!” President Bush had to ask, “Which one of us are you talking to?”

A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness.

We need to apply twenty-first century information technology to the health care field. We need to have our medical records put on the I.T.

I want each and every American to know for certain that I’m responsible for the decisions I make and each of you are as well.

I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe – I believe what I believe is right.

Why don’t you volunteer? Why don’t you mentor a child how to read?

We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an economic challenge.

Finally, the desk, where we’ll have our picture taken in front of, is, nine other presidents used it. I think it was given us by Queen Victoria in the 1870s, I think it was. President Roosevelt put the door in so people would not know he was in a wheelchair. John Kennedy put his head out the door.

The Bob Jones policy on interracial dating, I mean I spoke out on interracial dating. I spoke against that. I spoke out against interracial dating. I support the policy of interracial dating. (Valentine’s Day, again).

We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself.

As Bush’s attention shifted more and more toward Iraq, the annual increases in the poppy harvest in Afghanistan have paralleled the resurgence of the Taliban.

February 14: Ann Coulter on th 9/11 widows: These broads are millionaires, lionized on tv and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparazzies. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.

On the one-year anniversary of Katrina in 2006, Bush was asked by NBC’s Brian Williams if he shouldn’t call for some sort of sacrifice after 9/11. He replied: “Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. America sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.”

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

She has a rabbit too, you know. A big soft stuffed white one with floppy ears that she named Louisa Mae (thinking Southern Comfort, despite the cliché). A rabbit who was even packed in the computer case and spent Christmas in the hospital. The nurses adored her. She arrived the last day of chemo and has been such a comfort. Finally warm, finally home, they lie down together.

Once upon a time there was a PBS rabbit named Buster. Buster traveled around the country, visiting different families and learning about their lives. In January 2005 he was in Vermont, learning about cheese and maple syrup. Learning that some families had two mothers instead of a mother and father. Digusting, Bush’s new Secretary of Education called it. Not examples we should hold up before our children.

The room heats up finally, thanks to the space heater he bought just as the cold spell was ending. For him it’s plenty warm in here. Lying under four blankets, she tries to read, her fingers numb with cold. Finally the blood begins to flow again. She bought him a similar heater years ago, but the thermostat never worked.

Trapped under his ATV for three nights and four days under frigid conditions, a man survived by whistling to scare off coyotes. He kept himself warm by surrounding himself with dead beavers and eating their rotting flesh. And here she was just about to cart the wig off to storage.

Oh Kenny Boy, the stockholders are calling, the press is up in arms. The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying. 'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide… 'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow… That’s right folks. Step this way and meet the man Georgie Porgie thought of appointing Secretary of the Treasury. Don’t be afraid of the bars, they’re only locked from the inside. Or actually they’re not locked well at all. Any credit card can trip them. Six years ago today, Kenneth Lay resigned from Enron. Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed… Bush claims to barely know the huge campaign donor. Oh Kenny boy, oh Kenny boy, I love you so.

She missed the shortest day of the year (also probably the day she fell in rehab). She missed Jaqnuary 20, the one-year countdown to the end of Bush’s term (a box over her head that would be used for books any moment). Days she’d been planning to celebrate. Had she taken a gun to her earlobe she’d have probably missed. A woman, friend of friends, stuck a revolver in her mouth, fired, survived. Severely brain-damaged.

She never turned on her computer. Her camera never made it out of her pocketbook. But at least he thought to snap this,the ramp of the van coming right on the porch. He showed it to her last night, along with photos of Italy and his grandsons at Disney World.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - It's been a chilly welcome for America's president: The Mideast, known for blazing sun and scorching winds, has been hit with an uncharacteristic wave of heavy rain, frigid gales, and even a smattering of snow. If President George W. Bush thought he would escape the winter weather back in Washington when he jetted off to this region for eight days, he should have stayed home. It was nearly the same temperature in Washington on Tuesday as it was in Saudi Arabia.

The furniture’s cold. The storage room’s cold. They won’t let her near it.

The truck spent the night on the street last night. This morning they drove down, unloaded, then went back to unpack and set up the shelving. They couldn’t believe how cold it had suddenly gotten. Instead of the heat from the storage room spreading out, the cold from all those boxes took over. It will be a few days before she sees the work they’ve done.

From now on, only handicap bathrooms. On the Atlantic City Boardwalk they had bathroom stalls that were little more than port-o-sans, but then they always had one or two regular stalls, kept reasonably clean. These you had to pay a dime for. Unless someone was coming out and holding the door for you. Unless there was a child around who could crawl under and unlock the door. Maybe she crawled once or twice, maybe she never crawled. But she remembers being on the floor like that.

There are always Orthodox scattered around these doctors’ waiting rooms. A woman in a very synthetic sloppy wig placed askew on head chats on a cell phone. Another woman comes in with a wool cap on, sits down, pulls out a mirror, and spends five minutes arranging dirty bangs with her fingers.

They stopped for ice cream (her body desperate for sugar once again; it’s been this way since chemo). The flavors weren’t written down and she was having trouble understanding what the guy was saying, so she just ordered from the first tub: raisin. He hates raisins.

She bought another five hats today, taking a cab to John St. after two doctor’s appointments. God knows what was going through her head. Besides exhaustion.Not quite the final half price markdowns, but there’s a 30% off after Christmas sale, with some really good hats left. She doesn’t want to be greedy, just covered.

The Bye-Bye Bush calendar reminds her that on this date (Jan. 14) in 2002 President Bush showed up for a press conference with a purple bruise on his cheek and a red scrape on his lower lip. He swept aside rumors that he’d literally fallen off the wagon, saying he choked on a pretzel. She’d forgotten those tales of the future president stumbling and falling, and getting up andthen quickly falling again and maybe hitting his head and briefly passing out. As if she’d ever cared. It had nothing to do with her.

It was during the first few months they were together. They drove out to Long Island, to a place that offered hang glider rides. Up above the clouds. Sun coming straight through that plastic. She barely staved off nausea. He asked the pilot what stunts he could do.

Everything grows better in a greenhouse, that protected environment. She takes a plant home and it’s dead within a day or two. She comes home, her balance certain, and… Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. Besides, all that glass and plastic closing in on her makes her faint. Faint means losing balance. So there’s no way out for her.

She breaks wind.

Germans, she reads, have developed a way to harness methane emissions from cattle. Cut down on the greenhouse effect, help fend off global warming. Increases the cow’s metabolism as well. It aids glucose production, makes the milk sweet. Now if they can just convince the cows to swallow the fist-sized pill.

I miss my parents, her mother-in-law said in a barely-audible whisper the night before she died. And she thought what a beautiful sentiment, knowing she’d see them soon. But her father-in-law, who could barely hear, heard I messed my pants. You hear what you need to hear. Depends.